The Think Tank

Good evening Trail Blazer fans wherever you may be…

Here we go again.  After defeating Phoenix on Sunday 105-100, the Blazers are set to face off against the Phoenix Suns tonight at 7:00pm for Game 2.  The game will be on KGW 8 and NBA TV.

As with the last game, we will need all the prayers/positive thinking/good vibes that everyone can muster if we want to win this game tonight and go up 2-0, and really bloody the Suns’ nose. There’ s a big part of me that thinks we are going to do exactly that, but then I heard a depressing statistic on the radio today: the last time the Blazers went 2-0 in a Playoff series was 1989.  Although, we did sweep the Mavericks that year.  So that’s a positive thought.

Also on the upside, even if we lose this game tonight there is still a lot of hope.  While reading a Suns fan blog this week I found out that Phoenix has lost the first game of a Playoff series eight times, and seven of those eight times they lost the series.  The sole exception was in 1993, when Charles Barkley, Dan Majerle and Danny Ainge defeated the Los Angeles Lakers after going down 0-2.

Alright, everyone!  The first Blazer game of the Playoffs is almost upon us!  I don’t care if you believe in God, Karma, good luck, Chi, or whatever…  We need all the luck we can get against a streaking Phoenix team, so put in a good word to whatever deity may have influence over NBA teams, send good vibes, meditate, visualize whirled peas… do whatever you can do!

Go Blazers!

The Portland Trail Blazers thumped on Oklahoma City tonight for their 50th win, marking our second 50 win season in a row and ensuring that we will not be facing the LA Lakers in the first round of the NBA Playoffs – and they did it without Brandon Roy, who tore his meniscus in the first quarter of Sunday’s game against the Lakers.  Somehow that only seems natural for this year: after our final game of the season on Wednesday night (against the Golden State Warriors) the Blazers will have a combined total of 308 games missed due to injury this year alone.

But, that’s a depressing topic.  On to the game…

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I just wanted to wish everyone a happy Easter!  I hope you all have a great day and that the Easter Bunny brings you some goodies!

Joel sent me an interesting link today regarding the origins of April Fool’s Day, which set me off on a little internet search for Tid Bits about the day to celebrate jokes and hoaxes.

The exact origins of April Fools Day is not completely clear, although the most commonly accepted idea is that the tradition started in the 1500’s when the Gregorian calender was adopted.  Prior to that, on the Julian Calendar, the New Year started on March 25 (which makes perfect sense to me since that is my birthday) but, since March 25 is in the middle of Holy Week the actual celebration of the new year was held on April 1st.

Celebrating the new year at roughly the same time as the Spring Equinox makes perfect sense: everything is starting anew after a long, hard winter.  The weather is warming, the trees and flowers are blooming, and the rabbits are… well, they are doing what rabbits do.  For those reasons and many others, the new Gregorian date was met with resistance by many people and as such they continued to celebrate the New Year on April 1st.  This seemed very foolish for those who did get (and accept) the memo, and those enlightened folks gave the foolish oldschooler’s the lasting moniker of April Fools.

Since that time traditions have evolved somewhat from pure admonishment to general bafoonery and joke making.  Many individuals have fallen prey to these endeavors over the years, but in my reading today I found out about several  large-scale jokes which have been pulled on an unsuspecting populace.

Here are some of my favorites:

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